No. 1 seed Aryna Sabalenka advanced to her fourth straight French Open quarterfinal with a 7-5, 6-3 defeat of No. 16 Naomi Osaka of Japan in the first women’s night-session match in three years on Friday in Paris.
It was a thorough win for Sabalenka, the 2025 runner-up who is still seeking her first career French Open championship. The Belarus native had 12 aces to Osaka’s two, won 72.7% of her service points, 90.9% of her net points and broke Osaka four times in five opportunities.
“She is such a great player,” Sabalenka said of Osaka. “It’s always really tough battles with her. Super aggressive tennis. I am mostly happy with the way I served, and I was able to put all that pressure back on her. I am happy with the win. It was amazing to play in the night session in front of you guys.”
After Sabalenka was broken for the only time in the match up 2-0 in the first set, she broke back at 5-5 in the first set, serving out to jump out to a 1-0 lead. They were on serve through the first six games of the second set before Sabalenka broke Osaka’s final two service games to close out the result.
Osaka failed to make her first quarterfinal appearance at Roland Garros after making the deepest French Open run of her career to the fourth round. Osaka also fell to 0-3 against Sabalenka this season after they hadn’t faced off since 2018.
For a spot in the semifinals, Sabalenka will face Russia’s Diana Shnaider, who eliminated the final American in the women’s draw, Madison Keys, 6-3, 3-6, 6-0.
With the win, No. 25 Shnaider advances to a Grand Slam quarterfinal for the first time in her career. The 22-year-old reached the fourth round of the 2024 U.S. Open but was unable to break through to the quarterfinals prior to this victory, which snapped an eight-match losing streak against top-20 opponents.
“Definitely super happy and proud of myself,” Shnaider said after her win. “Went on court today thinking about, just, I need to grind (Monday). Definitely clay, a little different conditions than hard courts. So, just tried to be more consistent today with trying to use more spin, more high balls, and then just putting more balls and trying to decrease my unforced errors, but then at the same time, have an opportunity to be more aggressive.”
The 19th-seeded Keys entered the match 3-0 in her career against Shnaider, but was done in by poor serving (four double faults to two aces) and 50 unforced errors against 27 winners.
Of those errors, 19 came in a disastrous third set where Keys won just 11 of 37 points.
The 2025 Australian Open champion, Keys reached the semifinals of the French Open in 2018 but hasn’t returned to that level since. She finished in the quarterfinals twice, including last year.
In other Monday action, Polish qualifier Maja Chwalinska kept her stunning run going with a 6-3, 6-2 defeat of France’s Diane Parry to reach the quarterfinals.
Chwalinkska — the first qualifier to reach the quarterfinals since Nadia Podoroska and Martina Trevisan in 2020 — saved the only break point she faced on her serve while converting 3 of 6 on Parry’s serve. While they both had 21 winners, Parry had nearly three times as many errors (38-14).
Next up will be No. 22 Anna Kalinskaya of Russia, who beat No. 28 Anastasia Potapova of Austria 6-4, 2-6, 7-6 (7) in a 2-hour, 49-minute marathon to reach her second Slam quarterfinal.
It was a defensive battle, as both competitors won fewer than 50% of their service points, with Kalinskaya converting 8 of 12 break points while Potapova converted 9 of 14. Kalinskaya won despite committing 58 unforced errors and being broken three times in the final set.
“A really long fight from both of us ’til the last seconds,” Kalinskaya said. “I’ve played her many times, but this one was definitely special. She improved a lot, so today was super challenging.”
–Field Level Media
